from the 2-too-many dept

Let's play out a little thought experiment. Let's say that a corporation involved in the money business has a logo for themselves. Now, let's say that two separate trademark holders both claim that this company's logo is too similar to their own. However, let's also stipulate in this scenario that the two offended trademark holders, who both claim similarity concerns with the finance company's logo, aren't bothering to file against each other for trademark claims, even though both are intimately knowledgeable of the other. Now, just to really make all this as face-palming-ly silly as possible, let's consider that these are the three logos in question:

Well, this isn't a thought experiment, it's actually happening, and it is maddeningly silly. The top left image is a registered logo for the Washington Nationals baseball team, the bottom left is the registered "W" flag the Chicago Cubs fly on the rare occassion they win anything, and the logo on the right is that of Evolution Finance's website, WalletHub, through which users can compare credit card prices and get financial advice. So what's the problem, you ask?

Evolution Finance has been locked in a trademark dispute with lawyers representing the Washington Nationals and Chicago Cubs for two years after Major League Baseball, on behalf of the teams, opposed their attempt to trademark the white-and-green logo. The league asserts that the WalletHub logo bears a strong resemblance to Ws trademarked by the two teams, and that granting Evolution Finance rights to use the mark without restrictions could create confusion for customers and complications for both businesses.

So many issues here, one struggles to know where to begin. Let's start with the fact that Evolution Finance is as much in the baseball business as it is in the puppy-murdering business, which is to say not at freaking all. "I came here to buy baseball tickets and I ended up transitioning my 401k into a personal Roth IRA on the basis of better returns in the bonds market" is a phrase that is nearly impossible to even have imagined, thus showing the extreme and dangerous power of dumb ass trademark claims. Add to it that half the problem appears to be that a trademark was granted on what barely amounts to more than a letter and we've already got issues with MLB's claims.

But to really make this a head-scratcher, I'm trying to figure out why the two teams, who actually are in the same market, are being allowed to make this claim when they haven't bothered to go after each other over their respective marks. I mean, the obvious answer is that the league likely wants the two teams to play nice over the Ws each as trademarked, but that shouldn't make anyone more comfortable with a specious move attacking a company that isn't in their market.

“It is common for trademark owners to sometimes overreach in protecting their marks,” said S. Lloyd Smith, an attorney at Buchanan, Ingersoll and Rooney who represents Evolution Finance. “They’re always concerned or cautious that if they don’t enforce their marks they might lose their rights. The real question is why does MLB care?” Smith said. “They don’t own the letter W. There’s lots of other Ws out there. They’re just plainly overreaching in this case.”

Overreaching and fanning on a curve ball for strike three, more like it.

from the home-run dept

I've made this clear in the past, but I'm a huge fan of Major League Baseball's Advanced Media wing and a good deal of the work they do in providing clips and streaming on the internet and mobile devices. One aspect I hadn't been aware of, however, was a method for watching games very quickly by stripping out the downtime, commercials and the commentary. As I understand it, it's all the game content and nothing else, and it can make it possible to watch a full game in fifteen minutes.

And if this sounds like something baseball broadcasts have obviously needed, a company called Baseball Quick fully agrees with you. That's why it also developed a system for likewise condensing baseball games. Then, because this is America, Baseball Quick and MLB spent the last three years going after each other in court for the two competing products that do the exact same thing. And, amazingly, despite the existence of patents in the works, the judge in the case has rightly outlined why there isn't any infringement.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest noted that each company's algorithm offers a different pitch, in a 23-page opinion issued Thursday. MLB "uses a subjective editing process focused on copying and pasting material, whereas BQ's is objective and focused on deleting material," the opinion states. She granted MLB's motion for a judgment declaring that its technology does not infringe its competitor's patent.

While it's not quite the idea/expression dichotomy one finds in copyright cases, it's nevertheless nice to see a court rule on the actual method ("art") rather than the outcome. Too often the focus is on the latter, which feeds into an ownership culture that appears to think that having an idea that is of use is the same as developing a patentable method for arriving at said use. In this case, the method for achieving shorter baseball broadcasts was different in a significant enough way that there's no infringement.

In the meantime, MLB is trying to get Baseball Quick's patent declared invalid under the idea that the method described is obvious. The move is likely MLB being vindictive, but that doesn't mean they aren't right. Shortening a broadcast of a baseball game by deleting all the parts that aren't the game does sound obvious, though the method for getting there may not be.

from the napping-for-fun-and-profit dept

Defamation laws can be a tricky thing. Public figures, for instance, can sometimes have a tough time navigating when the law doesn't apply, while the more crazy but less famous folks of the world seem to occasionally forget that truth is a defense against defamation. Add to them the times when entire organizations forget that parody exists and is protected speech and suddenly you begin wondering whether anyone ever gets a defamation suit right.

Well, if they do, it sure ain't Andrew Robert Rector, part-time baseball fan and full-time misguided-lawsuit-filer. See, Andrew fell asleep at a Yankees/Red Sox game, and ESPN's cameras caught him snoozing. Now Andrew is suing roughly everyone for ten million dollars. Confused? You're not the only one. The at times hard to understand filing appears to be relatively unconcerned with facts, you see.

Rector claims he was filmed, and defamed, at the April 13 game between the Yankees and Red Sox, at Yankee Stadium.

"In the course of watching the game plaintiff napped and this opened unending verbal crusade against the napping plaintiff," the complaint states. ESPN focused its cameras on him, Rector says, and then "Announcers like Dan Shulman and John Kruck unleashed avalanche of disparaging words against the person of and concerning the plaintiff. These words, include but not limited to 'stupor, fatty, unintelligent, stupid' knowing and intending the same to be heard and listened to by millions of people all over the world ..."

Except, other than the camera noticing the dozing fan, none of the other accusations are even remotely accurate. For the millionth time, I find myself thanking the universe for MLB's Advanced Media, which provides video of the entire episode during the broadcast. Like I said, the complaint isn't even close to being true. The specific allegations of what the announcers said are simply wrong. They never said those things. On top of that, the complaint appears to be written by someone that needs remedial English classes, because sections of it border on incomprehensible. It even gets the names of the announcers wrong.

John Kruck [sic] in his verbal attack insinuated that the plaintiff is individual that know neither history nor understood the beauty or rivalry between Boston Red Sox and New York Yankee [sic].

And:

Plaintiff alleges that MLB.com, juxtapositions of photos and text of two men kissing each other and caption "sleeping Yankee's Fan cares not for your rivalry talk" falsely implied that plaintiff engaged in that type of conduct described or portrayed by the picture. In light of all the surrounding circumstances.

Now, that particular passage had me monumentally confused, until I read Deadspin's post about this whole situation. They're postulating that Andrew and/or his lawyers appear to be mistaking a third party for ESPN, which is about as shocking as the sun rising in the east.

That completely nonsensical paragraph seems to be referring to this blog post on NotSportsCenter.com, which has nothing to do with MLB or ESPN. But anyway, Andrew Rector wants everyone to know that he's totally not gay, bro. Stupid, maybe, but totally not gay.

Whoo-boy. In other words, in sum total, it's difficult to imagine how Andrew Rector and whatever crackerjack legal team he has hired could have screwed this up any worse. Probably best at this point to drop the whole thing and go away, particularly considering how the lawsuit has now streisanded this story and far more people are witnessing the plaintiff's actions than ever would have otherwise.

from the root,-root-root-for-someone-out-of-market dept

Can you smell it yet? The freshly cut grass, the muffled sound of thousands of fans, the wonderous gasps of young people? Baseball is back. I'm generally an avid fan of professional sports and, as I've written about before, a strong promoter of the idea that the pro sports leagues I love so much could benefit greatly from a wider, more open embrace for streaming their games online. Particularly for leagues on the lower end of the popularity and revenue spectrums, I would think that building a wider audience through internet streaming would be a boon to otherwise mediocre broadcasting partnerships. The NHL in particular is known to have absolutely brutal broadcast contracts that aren't supporting teams as well as they could if the league were to attempt to multiply their viewership through streaming.

But with Major League Baseball, it's a whole different animal. Teams in Major League Baseball are insanely profitable, in largest part because of the broadcasting revenue. With that in mind, it might seem silly to suggest that MLB should be looking at ways to free up their streaming product. But that's wrong and here's why.

First, let's start with a little background and some compliments. Nobody in pro sports leagues does streaming as well as MLB in terms of quality and quantity. For $130/year, you get almost all the games for the entire season in full HD, with options for the radio or television broadcasts offered by either of the teams playing. The stream is reliable and of good quality, with a pop-out media player that's simple. For the games they stream, it works beautifully.

You've probably already guessed the problem, haven't you? It's region locked, with the arbitrary borders of a team's fan-base blacked out from their team's streams, both for home games and away games. The idea, of course, is that MLB doesn't want to offend their local broadcast partners by offering their broadcast over streaming as a charged service. Their thought is essentially that the broadcast is TV's product and local advertising is what pays the television stations, who in turn pay MLB for the rights to the games. Let's turn this on its head, though, and see the insane kind of money MLB could make if they stopped seeing themselves as only being in the baseball business and also offered up their established streaming infrastructure to their broadcasting partners.

MLB, today, could go to TV stations, cable or otherwise, and offer up their robust streaming platform. MLB would make its money charging more for broadcast rights under that kind of agreement. TV stations in turn could claim a higher viewership than they have today through TV only, allowing them to generate increased revenue in advertising sales and rates. Keep in mind that MLB.TV is using those station broadcasts anyway (for instance, the MLB.TV Chicago Cubs stream is just the WGN/CSN broadcast streamed over MLB.COM). Between internet streaming and mobile devices, viewership numbers would skyrocket. I say this because of how often we're told about the horrific danger of all the sports streaming sites already out there offering the exact thing MLB.TV could be getting paid for. In other words, anyone with an internet connection can already do all this, while MLB.TV could offer the same thing as part of their package with infrastructure they already have in place.

In summary, baseball could today, without having to invest in any infrastructure, work with broadcast partners to free up streaming to local fans who can already get those streams through illegitimate services. It would benefit the league, the broadcast partners, the advertisers, and the fans. There is literally no loser in this equation. All it would take is some forward-thinking folks in the league and TV to get over their protectionist traditions and make it happen.

In the meantime, my MLB.TV subscription means I can't watch my team play for no logical reason.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Moneyball (the movie) has recently popularized the concept of sabermetrics, but for a while now, real sports fans (and mathletes) have been applying rigorous analysis to just about every sport. There still aren't any sure bets, but forecasting player performance has gotten a lot better in the last decade or so. Here are just a few examples of math geeks taking some shots at jocks.

from the bogus-copyright-claims dept

You all know the routine. Towards the end of the sporting event you're watching, one of the announcers will remind the audience that the sports league in question holds the copyright, and you can't do a damn thing about it. It's slightly different per league, but the NFL one reads: "This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent, is prohibited." We wrote about that a few years back when law professor Wendy Seltzer posted a clip of just that NFL warning to show how the NFL was exaggerating its rights... and got a takedown notice. The MLB one is a bit different. It reads: "Any rebroadcast, retransmission, or account of this game, without the express written consent of Major League Baseball, is prohibited." We wrote about that one because one guy asked MLB for permission to describe a game to his friend, and MLB wouldn't give it. The FTC has been asked to stop sports leagues from making such overly broad (and legally misleading) claims, but hasn't done anything.

Of course, this has some questioning whether or not the FCC just did a rebroadcast or retransmission of an account of the game without (one assumes) express written consent of Major League Baseball. Of course, MLB's random attempts to enforce its bogus claims of ownership on data have all failed, and I'm sure it knows better than to take on the FCC in a losing cause, but it does a nice job of highlighting just how ridiculous the "warning" is from the MLB, and makes you wonder why the FTC doesn't crack down on what appears to be copyfraud.

from the say-that-five-times-fast dept

Major League Baseball is notorious for it's incredibly over aggressive enforcement of copyright and trademark laws, often well-beyond what is reasonable. Reader Mark alerts us to MLB's latest move, which is to demand that a flugtag team from Philadelphia remove the head of the Philly Fanatic that it put on their flugtag for one of Red Bull's regular Flugtag competitions. MLB's defense, I'm sure, is that it has to enforce the trademark and make sure no one else is using it without a license. But that's just silly. First of all, there's only a trademark offense when it's a use in commerce, and a silly competition based on trying to launch homemade, human-powered flying machines that cannot fly, is not quite a use in commerce. But, more to the point, these are fans of the team trying to promote the team and promote their fandom. And MLB is shutting them down. That's not particularly fan friendly. And so, instead of the Philly Phanatic on a Flugtag, it'll be decapitated by a silly trademark claim.

from the winning-fans dept

If you run a site that allows comments, and some of those commenters are incredibly annoying... is the responsibility on you, as the site owner, to deal with those annoying commenters, or can you actually go to court against people for being jerks on your site? Apparently, Major League Baseball is choosing the latter option. It's going to court to try to get the identity of some commenters on its website who have been posting comments that are:

Of course, that probably describes a rather large percentage of comments on some websites these days. Apparently MLB tried to deal with it internally, but failed in blocking those users. So rather than amp up its technical skills, MLB is going to court to demand that ISPs identify who it is that's been posting these comments, so that it can "pursue appropriate action."

In a world where we're seeing people charged with being jerks online, it seems like we're entering a dangerous world, with massive chilling effects on free speech. Obviously, being a jerk, and posting inappropriate material is annoying -- and MLB has every right to set up technological or moderation measures to deal with it. But potentially suing those individuals seems to cross a dangerous line.

from the well,-that's-better-than-the-alternative dept

For years now, Major League Baseball's online division, MLB.com, has been over aggressive in claiming ownership and control over anything associated with Major League Baseball -- even though court after court has told them they don't get to control everything. However, MLB just keeps on claiming ownership of things anyway, such as sending out various DMCA takedown notices to YouTube for any clip of baseball put up by anyone else. Larry Lessig has the story, though, of one fan who fought back and filed a detailed counterclaim about how his video was fair use and MLB was repeatedly abusing its power in damaging ways. Amazingly, not only did MLB relent, it featured the video it had just demanded get taken down on its own blog. To be honest, there's a chance that the two things are unrelated, and the blogger had no idea that the parent company's lawyers were trying to shut down the video -- but the story is a good reminder that if someone is overreaching in their takedown attempts, it can be effective to respond with a counternotice that clearly states the issues.

from the and-it's-correct dept

Over the past few years, there have been a series of lawsuits concerning whether or not fantasy baseball operators need to license player info from Major League Baseball. Major League Baseball lost at every level and an eventual appeal to the Supreme Court was turned down. However, it appears that the National Football League wanted to ignore these rulings, and has still been trying to get fantasy sports sites to pony up to use stats and player info -- despite the fact that you cannot copyright facts. CBS is now challenging the NFL on this, and has gone to court to get a declaratory judgment that it doesn't need a license. It's difficult to see this case turning out any differently than the MLB cases, considering the facts of the case are almost identical.